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Monday, March 9, 2015

5 Tips to follow if you want to write a killer headline

Photo courtesy of Bizzebee.com

There is an art to writing headlines and titles for the
articles and stories you write. In the
newspaper and magazine world, it is an editor’s job to come up with the perfect
words that will draw readers to your article.
In the online world, that job falls to the writer; and the more you know
about writing headlines, the better your chances to entice readers into reading
your words.

WordStream: Online Advertising Made Easy offers a ton of great
advice for writing outstanding headlines on their blog of July 17, 2014: 19
Headline Writing Tips for More Clickable, Shareable Blog Posts. A few of their tips are shared below, and I urge
you to check out all 19 tips on their blog.

19 Headline Writing tips

for More Clickable, Shareable Blog Posts

It’s easy to let headlines take the back seat in your
writing process. Headlines can wind up as a quick afterthought, but really
should be treated with much more consideration. In fact, your headline is
arguably more important than the article itself. After all, who cares how great
your blog post is if no one even reads it?

Out of all the folks who read your headline, only 20% will
read the article copy. Whether it’s for email subject lines, blog posts,
ebooks, or webinars, you need a powerful, sexy headline to make readers swoon.

Modern online article headlines are tricky – they need to be
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) keyword friendly, but also should be unique
and creative. The end result needs to be super clickable, irresistible
headlines.

If you’re like me, your eyeballs encounter nearly a hundred
headlines before you’ve finished your first cup of coffee. What makes you read
one story over another? It’s all about the headline – that magical string of
words that allures and excites.

1. Numbers, digits,
& lists

Starting your headline with a number helps the headline
stand out. Just as the human eye is drawn to contrasting colors, we’re also
naturally drawn to the juxtaposition of digits resting beside text. A list also
gives readers a clearer idea of what to expect in your post, as well as
promising a quick, scan-friendly read.

Some great list words to get you started:

Reasons

Ways

Tips

Tricks

Secrets

Ideas

Techniques

Strategies

Facts

Methods

Statistics

2. Educate the Masses

People often search online to educate themselves or learn
more about a particular concept. They want to learn how to build a fire pit,
where to see an off-Broadway musical, how to eat an apple core (hey, I don’t
know, people are wacky!)

Many successful headlines use the “how to” concept with some
extra embellishment. Starting all your articles with “how to…” gets really
boring really quickly, so think of creative ways to present a “how to”
educational article, for example….

3 Best
Methods for Peeling a Mango

6
Strategies for Deterring Burglars

Build
Your Own Firepit: A Beginner’s Guide

Teaching
Your Dog to Fetch: Canine Training 101

Hot headline writing keywords like “101” and
“Complete/Beginners Guide” are great to include in educational posts. Using
words like these reassures readers that your article will be in layman terms
that they can understand, marketed towards beginners.

3. Remember the Five
Ws

In grammar school you probably remember learning the 5 Ws:

Who

What

When

Where

Why

These engaging, interrogative words are used to gather
information. By using them in your headlines, you articulate to readers the kind of information you intend to provide.

4. Address Readers in
2nd Person

While writing prose in 2nd person is infamously awkward,
it’s the perfect form for headline writing, grabbing the attention of readers
by calling them out.

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5. Use Images to Complement HeadlinesHeadlines are a big deal, and in many cases on the web, they
are the one and only way to introduce your article to the world. However, many
social sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pintetrest, and, more recently, Twitter,
make it easy to add images alongside your link headlines. This is awesome news
because images are insanely powerful and can do a lot to boost the success of
your headline.

As Buffer notes,
you can’t just use any old image to compliment your headline. The image you
should provide a strong visual clue to the topic of the article.

Contributors

March writing prompt

For the windy month of March, we suggest writing about the weather. It could be a story set in the sunny Caribbean, pioneers' winter on the Great Plains, a poem about your favorite season, short story about your summers as a youth, the effects of this winter on the Northeast or how about a story about season specific sports? Try your hand at haiku, fantasy or a murder mystery set in?

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